


Tell It To The Radio

by marginalia



Category: Alice Isn't Dead (Podcast)
Genre: Canon Character of Color, Canon Queer Relationship, Chromatic Yuletide, F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, Non-Linear Narrative, There are Oracles on these roads, what even is time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-20 01:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17012964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/pseuds/marginalia
Summary: Alice spins the dial of the radio and Keisha’s voice crackles across all the frequencies at once.





	Tell It To The Radio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalachuchi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalachuchi/gifts).



> Title from the purest road trip band, The Old 97's.

They’re two women from Northern California. They’re just like everyone else and not like anyone at all. One was dead for a while and then she wasn’t, and she gets a lot done either way. The other was afraid of everything and she still is, and she doesn’t let any of that stop her from doing what needs to be done. They sit in cracked diner booths. They trace shapes in the palms of each other's hands. They eat club sandwiches and hamburgers.

And they blow things up.

“Maybe when all this is over we can be the Derelict Gardeners,” Keisha said, hooking her ankle around Alice’s to distract her as she stole a fry. It was one of those afternoons they were pretending to be normal, or at least Alice was. “We can try creating something for a change.” 

Alice wondered about the _when_ in that statement, wondered why she could only hear it as an _if_ , wondered when and how Keisha, often so uncertain, had arrived at such certainty. Alice had missed her wife so much, missed so much of her wife, missed the shape of their names in their mouths, the shape of their love on their faces.

If this ever ended, they would try creating. Why not. Destruction, even of evil, takes a little bit of you with it every time. Maybe creation could restore them too.

There was plenty that needed to be restored.

_Leg upon leg_

It took Alice longer than it should have to realize she’d been protecting Keisha from herself almost as much as from the Thistle Men. The repulsion she felt for them was marbled through with the satisfaction of destroying the repulsive. It was sickening, but it was there, the fear of the darkness in her, the fear it too might become big and yellow, sagging and starving.

She didn’t understand that it was a different kind of darkness, not at first. The darkness from which the light draws power is not the same darkness that destroys the light. Sometimes fighting is your only option. That’s the world we live in. The fight had taken the best part of herself, but if she was lucky - and she already had been so, incredibly lucky - a victory might give it back.

_Leg upon leg, hand upon hand_

It wasn’t the first time or the last time or the best time or the worst time, but it was a time after resurrection, a time of Alice coming back to herself, coming back to Keisha, coming back to them, two once again one. 

She breathed deep the particular scent of Keisha, rich and sweet and warm under her breasts. Hands laced together, hands deep and strong and sure, reaching for the center of them. They moved together, golden glowing in the morning sun, backs arching.

This is you, their hearts chanted, this is me, this is us together creating something beautiful if only for this moment.

_Leg upon leg, hand upon hand, palm upon chest_

Alice and Lucy checked into a motel painted toothpaste green, and they were probably the only people there not paying by the week. Small children in tshirts with juice stains and sneakers with no socks were climbing the stairs like monkeys, swinging from the handrails, shouting and laughing, trying to take up all the space the world denied them. Alice wasn’t the type to pray, and she’d seen a lot worse by now, but she still hoped they’d all make it through the day without cracking their skulls open.

The motel pool was tempting, clear cool water, but eerily empty given the number of guests. Alice thought she’d go for a swim, hand before hand before hand reaching, pulling her weight through the water, seeking a purer form of pain, a satisfying ache. She rummaged through her bag, pulled out boyshorts and a tank top, reached for a sandpaper-like towel, and soon she was poolside. As she toed off her shoes she stopped suddenly, a sight surprising even to her, even now, of a human figure in a grey hoodie emerging dry as a bone from the water.

“Hey,” Alice tried.

“Hey yourself,” said the figure slowly, as if they had all the time in the world. Maybe they did. They tilted their head. “We’ve been waiting for you. You need to know something.” 

Alice nodded. There was so much she needed to know that she couldn’t even find the shape of it let alone the size, and if people in grey hoodies were going to help her out she sure as hell was going to accept. “It’s time to start listening,” the figure said. “She’s been calling to you.”

The figure didn’t have to say who _she_ was. Alice felt Keisha everywhere, rushing back into all the places that Alice had pushed her out of in a failed attempt to protect herself. She came all over dizzy, sat in one of the plastic chairs quickly before her legs gave out, breathed slowly, in and out, fitting her idea of herself back into her body.

When she looked up again, the figure in the hoodie was gone. So was the water. The pool was half-covered, the visible half scattered through with deflated pool toys and life vests, all weather-worn, sun-bleached, and dusted with fallen leaves.

_Leg upon leg, hand upon hand, palm upon chest upon belly upon upon upon_

Alice doesn’t know anymore how long she’s been on the road. A week or a month or a year with a hollow space inside her where Keisha used to be. Where she tore Keisha out to protect her, to save the world, and by the world, of course, she meant Keisha.

Alice spins the dial of the radio and Keisha’s voice crackles across all the frequencies at once. Her voice says pain. Her voice says loss. Her voice says love up from her goddamned gut. 

“Chanterelle,” Alice whispers before she can stop herself. 

A plan begins forming inside her. Or maybe the plan was there all along. She feels the flutter of her pulse, anxious but ready.

_Palm upon chest upon the beginning of the end_


End file.
